Government policy is driving a fundamental shift of care from hospitals to more community-based settings. There is a growing expectation that this shift will be supported by the development of a network of new facilities in which primary, community and secondary care services are co-located, often referred to as polyclinics. ...
'Free choice' - allowing patients being referred for non-urgent treatment to choose a hospital anywhere in England - begins in the NHS in England in April 2008. It is another milestone in a policy that aims, among other things, to use consumer pressure to improve the quality of hospital services ...
This paper tells the story of an innovative approach by the King's Fund to develop the role of learning from practice in the voluntary sector through its new grants programme, Partners for Health, which was set up in 2005. The paper presents the findings of an evaluation of the programme, ...